


Secrets

by persephoneflame (Adri)



Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Big Gay Mobsters, Character Study, Gay Male Character, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-03
Updated: 2009-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-18 02:32:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adri/pseuds/persephoneflame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Marcone knows about secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Marcone, secrets  
> Spoilers: Spoilers through Death Masks  
> Notes/Warnings: Written for smallfandomfest. Thanks to Binz for ensuring that this was coherent.

Johnny Marcone knew about secrets. He knew he wasn't supposed to tell his mama where the extra money was coming from or when someone "like-liked" a girl or who wrote "for a good time call..." on the back of the bus. He was twelve when he realized he was different from the other boys, who suddenly got tongue-tied around the girls and seemed to be willing to discuss little else. He was thirteen when he realized he was going to have to keep his difference a secret, and that he'd never had a secret like this. He watched as Nick Rossi lay in a huddle against the park fence, the shouts and slurs of the other boys fading, but 'queer' still ringing in his ears, and Johnny knew his life was going to have to change.

He turned his back on Nick, who had been his friend, and whose only crime had been smiling too much at one of the bigger boys. Johnny knew he'd like to do more than smile at them, and he knew, then, that that was never, ever going to be an option. He walked away from the park with his fists clenched tight enough to hurt, to keep himself from crying. He was never, ever going to be in that position; small and defenseless. He had too much responsibility to his mama, to his family, to single himself out.

He watched the other boys covertly and mimicked their behavior. He learned to fight. The very next year, as soon a they would take him, he joined the Vargassi gang. He took girls to prom, and then to bed. He even liked some of them, though never enough that he really believed, as much as he tried, that he had succeeded in making himself normal.

He was nineteen when he slept with a boy for the first time. He was working as a bouncer at a mid-range strip club when one of the girls offered to introduce him to a friend of hers. Johnny knew he had to accept a reasonable number of these offers to fit in, so he agreed without hesitation. Paul was not who he was expecting when he showed up at the fifth floor walk-up in south Chicago with a single rose and his shoes shined. The laughing young man who answered the door took one look at him, pulled him inside and opened a whole new world for Johnny. It was a whole world of secrets; secret glances and secret locations and secret meetings. There were no gay gangsters, but as long as he was careful and quiet and most of all, kept it a secret, no one looked too closely at what a thug like Johnny got up to in his spare time.

It was different for a mafia boss, of course. More power and more responsibility and more scrutiny, and Johnny realized that his days of discreet trysts were over. He had bigger and more important secrets to juggle, and he put that aspect of his life away without too much concern. He took beautiful women to society functions and then to bed, rarely the same one more than once, and earned himself a reputation as something of a lady's man, much to his own amusement. He had working relationships with men and women that he valued, and told himself it was enough. It was over a decade before he regretted the decision with more than a brief pang of loss or sexual frustration.

Johnny Marcone was gay, and he was sure it was a secret he could never tell.

~~~

Marcone knew about secrets. He worked for the mob, after all, and there are some things even mid-level bruisers like Marcone have to keep secret. But his real secrets had always been personal; he had never kept a secret like this. He stared at the little girl in the hospital bed, her pale face almost a match for the undisturbed white sheets and he knew then and there that his life was going to have to change.

It started with the girl. Marcone had been sent to "clean up this mess," as if it was his fault, as if killing the girl would be correcting the fault. The whole thought made him sick, so it wasn't difficult to decide to bribe a harried, debt-burdened resident to pronounce her dead and make photo-copies of her chart under "Jane Doe." Her parents were told she was cremated under their orders, and had one more reason to hate the Vargassis. Marcone had her transferred to a long-term care facility the next county over.

He was on pins and needles for weeks, sure someone would discover his deception and blatant disregard for orders, but no one even asked him about it once the job was done. It was a strong lesson in showing people what they wanted to believe while doing something completely different. It opened his eyes to myriad possibilities, and soon he had a hold on not only his whole crew, but their boss as well.

From there, without outwardly seeming to make any move in the organization, he gained influence over other crews, over accountants and doctors and suppliers. He did it almost entirely without bloodshed. He found a polite word and a knife to the gut was more effective than the knife alone, mostly because those who lived were terrified of him, of his calm, deadly control. It took two years to stage his takeover, and through it all he held the memory of that too-still little girl in his mind.

When he had started keeping such large secrets, such dangerous secrets, it had been for the sake of one girl, of saving her, or himself, he wasn't sure which. By the time Marcone became Gentleman John in the least bloody mob coup in memory, it was about a lot more. People had to conduct business, but there was just no reason for it to be so messy, so inefficient, so deadly. His new power gave him the ability to change that, all because of one stray bullet that had been meant for him.

Marcone was proud of what he'd accomplished because a little girl lost her life, and that was a secret he would never tell.

~~~

Gentleman John knew about secrets. He was a mafia don, after all, and kept more secrets than he could name; but he had never known a secret like this. There was another world of power and politics and intrigue right under his nose.The first time John saw magic, real magic, performed, he knew his life was going to have to change.

The wizard scared him more than anything had scared him in years. The glimpse of the man's soul hadn't helped much. He was unpredictable, uncontrollable with money, and it was quite possible that John wasn't capable of having him killed. John immediately went to work to correct those problems.

He dug up newspaper reports, magazine articles, health records, and court orders. He pulled Dresden's file at Chicago PD, both his consultant file and his criminal record. He examined test results. He spoke to former clients. He had his people pose as clients. He had seen inside the wizard's soul and knew who he was, but it took an immense amount of research to predict how he would behave. By the end, he had a comprehensive report on Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. He knew things about Dresden that Dresden probably didn't know himself. He certainly knew, without a doubt, that he would never hear that man call him "Boss."

If he couldn't have Harry Dresden, John would maximize efficiency by hiring a magic user who could kill him if necessary, giving John some measure of control over both magic and the wizard. It turned out Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden had a reputation, and it took John more than a year and some very fancy talking to find someone to fill the position.

Ms. Gard was everything John could want in a retainer, everything Harry wasn't: ruthless, efficient, polite, and discreet. And, John admitted, only in the privacy of his own mind, having a Valkyrie bodyguard was really, really cool.

It took him years to admit even to himself that he preferred knowing Harry Dresden, independent wizard, to having him on payroll. It was the same sense of right and wrong that kept the wizard from working for him as had Dresden leading the cavalry in John's rescue. It was the same impropriety and fearlessness that infuriated John and that made the wizard one of the only men in the city who would disagree with John Marcone, mafia boss. And it was his very independence from the outfit that allowed Harry to see John very occasionally as a man and not a kingpin.

John respected and liked Harry because he had turned him down, not in spite of it, but that was a secret he would never tell.


End file.
